Mari Ruti and Gail N. Newman, "The Creative Self: Beyond Individualism" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Mari Ruti and Gail N. Newman, "The Creative Self: Beyond Individualism" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Date: February 25, 2026
Host: Tracy Morgan
Guest: Gail M. Newman
Book Discussed: "The Creative Self: Beyond Individualism" by Mari Ruti and Gail N. Newman

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Episode Overview

This episode features Tracy Morgan in conversation with Gail M. Newman, co-author (with the late Mari Ruti) of "The Creative Self: Beyond Individualism." The book explores the psychological, philosophical, and cultural critiques of neoliberalism and self-optimization, using the psychoanalytic frameworks of Winnicott and Marian Milner (for Newman) and Lacan and Milner (for Ruti). The episode balances deep intellectual discussion with personal remembrance of Mari Ruti, exploring their friendship and collaboration, while delving into the book’s core themes: the dangers of neoliberal performance culture, the necessity of solitude, the complexities of subjectivity, and creative alternatives to the contemporary drive for self-optimization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Beginnings: Friendship & Collaboration

[04:57 – 10:25]

• Gail's Relationship with Mari Ruti:
  Gail describes the poignancy and surreality of discussing a deeply collaborative book after Mari’s passing:

  “Even though she was 10 years younger...she always felt like a mentor. Mari played an extraordinarily important role in my own intellectual and actually personal life.” (Gail, 04:57)

• Origins of the Book:
  Their collaboration stemmed from mutual admiration and an evolving intellectual friendship. Inspired by Ruti’s previous collaborative book with Amy Allen and a shared interest in psychoanalytic theory, particularly Winnicott and Marian Milner, they decided to each write separate but thematically connected sections.

2. The Book's Purpose and Context

[10:25 – 14:39]

• A Therapeutic Alternative to Neoliberal Performance:
  The authors sought to answer, “What is the point of life anyway?” amid the pressures of neoliberalism (e.g. speed, perfection, productivity).

  “This neoliberalism is killing us… what is the point of life anyway?” (Tracy, 11:20)

  The book centers on the harm done by societal performance demands and the loss of space for creativity, rest, and introspection.

• Psychoanalytic Frameworks:
  The book uses Winnicott’s ideas as a primer for non-specialists (e.g. the paradox of true/false self, the importance of paradox, ongoingness, thirdness) to analyze the effects of contemporary culture.

3. Neoliberalism, Performance, and the Psyche

[14:05 – 16:41; 17:10 – 25:30]

• Toxic Effects of Self-Optimization:
  Mari’s part focuses on the demand for efficiency and performance as the most toxic effect, creating, “very strongly controlled and controlling… ego.” (Gail, 14:48)

• Worldly Transcendence and Binarism:
  Ruti laments the lack of “worldly transcendence” in daily life. Newman discusses how societal polarization creates “zero sum.. everything is either or.”

• Relationality and Neoliberal Echoes:
  The guest discusses surprising affinities between relational psychoanalysis and neoliberal ideals of self-management and self-care, observing,

  “It’s an antidote or an alternative in a way, but it's so easily pulled in…It’s the flip side of the binary: either it’s me, or I'm going to do everything with my group, my yoga group, or whatever...” (Gail, 19:30)

4. Psychoanalytic Ideas: True/False Self, Ego, and Creativity

[24:41 – 30:36]

• Winnicott's True/False Self Paradox:
  Emphasizes function over fixed identity:

  “If the false self grows out of compliance… the core of the self recedes…But we all need false selves…if the false self emerges from the impetus of my core, because I want to play…it’s a joyful, creative thing.” (Gail, 24:42)

• Milner and the Non-Egoic Self:
  Ruti's interest in Milner signaled a personal and theoretical shift toward dissolution of ego boundaries, especially as she faced her own mortality.

  “She had worked so hard to find that exquisite tension between diving into jouissance and not drowning and madness...” (Gail, 29:11)

5. Solitude, Loss, and the Value of Emptiness

[32:04 – 38:30]

• Solitude as Necessary:
  Both authors stress the importance—and rarity—of solitude, particularly as a counter to the “relational” pressures of modern life and as a resource in dying and creativity.

  “The really crucial need for solitude in a world that emphasizes relationship. But Mari’s is very, very strong.” (Gail, 32:04)

• Emptiness and Unintegration:
  The book draws from Winnicott’s concept of “unintegration”—the positive value of emptiness and not filling every moment.

  “If you don’t have the opportunity… to experience emptiness, lack in the positive sense, then there is engendered this kind of weird simultaneous fear of emptiness, but also craving it.” (Gail, 35:53)

  Example: Students listening to audiobooks at double speed, wanting to get to the end and unable to tolerate emptiness or “space.”

6. The Disaster Already Happened

[39:45 – 44:13]

• Regression as Integration:
  Tracy and Gail discuss the importance of accepting that past traumas have already occurred (“the disaster has already happened”) as a relief and therapeutic turning point.

  “When I read that…almost every time I encounter it, it seems so profound…It’s a relief. It gives you permission to... stop the warding off.” (Gail, 42:52)

  This allows the present self, often with the analyst, to finally witness and integrate that loss or trauma.

7. Aggression, Hate, and Difficult Feelings

[44:13 – 47:31]

• The Vitality of Negative Feelings:
  Tracy recounts a clinical example of a patient expressing hate, arguing that allowing for hatred and negative feelings in the consulting room is crucial, especially as neoliberal self-optimization pushes toward dissociation from “bad feelings.”

  "No, bad feelings are not a part of the neoliberal vocabulary, writes Mari." (Tracy, 46:16)

• Diagnosis as Stopping Point:
  Gail critiques diagnostic culture when it becomes definitive and forecloses curiosity or further engagement:

  “If it stops thinking, if it stops engagement, if it stops curiosity, then it can get a little damaging.” (Gail, 47:31)

8. Psychoanalysis, Action, and Political Life

[52:38 – 63:14]

• The Changing Public Sphere:
  Tracy observes the transformation in psychoanalytic culture—from one of privacy and reticence to one involving PR professionals and public engagement, noting both positive and problematic neoliberal dimensions.

• Psychoanalysis and Activism:
  Gail expresses skepticism about psychoanalysis as a political tool due to its individual and Eurocentric history, but states:

  “I will never again apologize for devoting my life to the study of the unconscious because I don’t think we can understand what’s happening in the United States...without taking account of the unconscious.” (Gail, 54:37)

• Race, Analysis, and Institutional Power:
  The conversation addresses lack of diversity in psychoanalytic institutions and the precarious position of people of color in leadership roles, along with the Holmes Commission’s call for action.

• Valuing Small-Scale Actions:
  Gail advocates for the radical potential of small, intimate forms of care, education, and psychoanalytic work—what she calls “minute to minute, day to day stuff…that are radical in the long way.” (Gail, 63:14)

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Memorable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• On Neoliberal Culture:
  “This neoliberalism is killing us… what is the point of life anyway?” (Tracy, 11:20)

• On Friendship and Mentorship:
  “Even though she was 10 years younger...she always felt like a mentor. Mari played an extraordinarily important role in my own intellectual and actually personal life.” (Gail, 04:57)

• On Creativity and False/True Self:
  “If the false self emerges from the impetus of my core…then it’s a joyful, creative thing.” (Gail, 24:42)

• On the Disaster Already Happened:
  "It’s a relief. It gives you permission to at least temporarily stop the warding off." (Gail, 42:52)

• On Emptiness:
  "If you don’t have the opportunity…to experience emptiness, lack in the positive sense...then there is engendered this kind of weird simultaneous fear of emptiness, but also craving it." (Gail, 35:53)

• On Psychoanalysis and Social Life:
  “I don’t think we can understand what’s happening in the United States…without taking account of the unconscious.” (Gail, 54:37)

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Notable Moments

• [04:57] Gail’s moving account of her first encounter with Mari at a conference, emphasizing Ruti’s incisive, jargon-cutting intellect without shaming others.
• [14:48] Discussion of how Mari’s style verges on high-level self-help, designed to counter the pressures of neoliberal “self-optimization.”
• [29:11] Reflection on how Ruti’s philosophies evolved as she faced terminal illness—moving toward acceptance of dissolution and lack.
• [35:53] Exploration of how our inability to tolerate emptiness or downtime leads to frantic consumption and avoidance.
• [46:16] Tracy’s critique of the “optimization” ethos in contemporary therapy and the loss of space for “bad feelings.”
• [54:37] Gail’s powerful assertion of the ongoing importance of psychoanalytic inquiry in understanding social phenomena like the 2016 U.S. election.
• [63:14] Defense of the everyday, often invisible work of care, education, and analysis as genuine forms of radical action.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:57] – Gail on relationship with Mari and book’s genesis
• [10:25] – Book’s aims: resisting neoliberalism, point of life
• [14:05] – Toxicity of performance culture, Ruti’s critique
• [17:10] – Complexity of the relational turn and neoliberal echoes
• [24:41] – Winnicott’s true/false self, and creativity
• [29:11] – Ruti, Milner, death, dissolution, and non-egoic being
• [32:04] – Solitude, friendship, chosen family
• [35:53] – On emptiness, craving/lacking space
• [39:45] – “The disaster already happened,” therapeutic implications
• [44:13] – Aggression, hate, and the place of bad feelings
• [47:31] – Limits of diagnosis, compulsive closure
• [52:38] – Public psychoanalysis, neoliberal self-promotion
• [54:37] – Psychoanalysis and the political unconscious
• [63:14] – Everyday radicalism: classrooms, consulting rooms

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Conclusion

This conversation is at once an intellectual reflection on the dangers of neoliberal self-optimization and a moving, intimate memorial to Mari Ruti’s collaborative spirit and enduring ideas. Through psychoanalytic and philosophical lenses, Gail M. Newman and Tracy Morgan navigate the losses, contradictions, and possibilities of contemporary life, modeling what it means to live creatively—beyond individualism—amid the pressures of performance society.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in psychoanalytic thought, cultural critique, and the existential challenges of the 21st century.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[B]

Hi everyone. Welcome to New Books in Psychoanalysis. My name is Tracy Morgan, your host and today we have the great pleasure to speak with Gail M. Newman about a book that she wrote with Mari Rudy called the Creative Beyond Individualism. I'm going to tell you, the audience a little bit about Gail and a little bit about Mari, just so you can get a sense of where they're coming from. Neither of them are psychoanalysts, but both of them are thinkers who depend on, I think is one way to put it, is depend on and make good in the most beautiful way of depending psychoanalytic thought. Gail for literature. And Mari, who is deceased, was a thinker in gender, sexuality studies, critical theory, philosophy. So Gail, who is here with us today, is the Harold J. Henry professor of German and Comparative Literature at Williams College in Massachusetts where she has taught German language, literature and culture, as well as courses in comp lit for over 40 years. Her research centers on questions of subjectivity and selfhood, language and narrative representation, and the unrepresentable. In addition to her 2025 book, Together with Mari Rudy, she called the Creative Self Beyond Individualism. As I just mentioned, Gail has published numerous articles in peer reviewed literary and psychoanalytic journals. Most recently Confusion of Language, Trauma and Transformation in Ingeborg Backman's Simultane. I don't know. Yeah, Simultane. And in the Journal of Austrian Studies and Fractal Constructing Psychoanalytic Truth in Gerhard Roth's the Lake in American Imago. Her next project looks through a Winnicottian lens at her many years of working with students on literature and language. So first a welcome to you, Gail, and so glad that we could find the time. And now I'm gonna. I get a little upset. It's upsetting that Mari's dead. Let me pull it together. I'm a crier. Anyway, so Mari Rudy, who I did interview many years ago, and the Call Character. And she was a Finnish Canadian theoretician who served as Distinguished professor of Critical Theory and of Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of Toronto. She was an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of contemporary theory, continental philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, cultural studies, affect theory, trauma theory, post humanist ethics, gender and sexuality studies. Among her numerous books. And this bio is written generously by Gail. Among her numerous books is a series of paired academic and general audience books centering on particular sorts of critical and psychoanalytic theory, including the Singularity of Being, Lacan and the Immortal within and the Call of Character. Living a Life Worth Living Distillations, theory, ethics, affect and penis envy, and other bad feelings. The emotional costs of everyday life. Toward the end of her all too short life, Mari's passionate commitment to dialogue took the form of collaborative books with the political philosopher Amy Allen, the artist Dwight Smith, and our guest today, the literary scholar Gail Newman. Welcome to New Books and Psychoanalysis.

[A]

Thank you very much, Tracy.

[B]

So thrilled to have you here.

[A]

So

[B]

I find myself in a little bit of a quandary because I've never done an interview where one of the authors is dead. And I was thinking a lot about that. I was thinking, how do we, you know, you're gonna. I'm gonna ask you questions and maybe you have to represent for Mari, and that's fine, you know, but it sort of was, I don't know, just my usual question when I start an interview is, you know, what. What motivated you or you both to write this book? But I want to ask maybe a little bit differently. I was thinking I wanted to ask about your friendship and relationship a little bit, how you two came to know each other and how you came to decide on writing this book. A book which I believe was Mari's final project, Correct?

[A]

It was one of. One of two of her final book length publications. Yes.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, is that, is that a fair question? Can you bring her into your knowing of her, into the room? I feel like that's a nice way to start.

[A]

I think that's exactly the way to start because it's extremely strange talking about our book that was so much a collaborative or a really collaborative, but a joint effort. It's just. It is very surreal to be talking about it by myself. And it particularly feels strange because I always, even though she was 10 years younger than me, she always felt like a mentor. Mari played an extraordinarily important role in my own intellectual and actually personal life. And so that makes it all the more poignant to have to try to evoke and invoke her by myself. I met her at the conference at one of the times, one of the iterations of the conference of the association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture Society that I attend a lot. And, you know, I can. I can remember vividly when I first met her. I was at a. I was at a panel, a Lacan, a panel on Lacan. And there were several, probably graduate students, just. I can. I can guess, graduate students on the panel. And it was, you know, interesting conversation, but very esoteric, shall we say, bit hermetic. And I remember hearing from behind me, I was sort of in the middle of the audience, from behind me, this voice with a very, very, very slight accent who asks this question that just later I realized that it was absolutely Mari in every way. It cut through the, you know, the sort of obscuring jargon, getting right to the heart of what the young men had been talking about without any shaming, without any superiority or anything like that. But. And they lit up because, you know, it gave her question, gave them the opportunity to engage with material in a more, you know, real way, small R real. And I turned around and looked, and here was this, you know, petite, blonde Finnish woman. And so I went up to her and talked to her, and we went out to dinner and then sort of the rest is history. And after that, I spent time at her house in Nova Scotia, and she often rented a place in Woods Hole on the Cape. I spent some time with her there. And I invited her to Williams a couple of times to give a talk, to give talks and meet students who are very enthralled with her. And then after her diagnosis, we. I think, as was the case with her, with all of her friends, we got closer. I spent time with her. We just talked and talked and talked into the night. And, you know, when her book with Amy Allen came out, I found it really intriguing. I don't know if you're familiar with that book, but she and Amy had actually sat at her kitchen table in Nova Scotia over a long weekend and talk about Lacan and Klein in relation to critical theory, and transcribed, recorded it, had somebody transcribe it, a grad student. And then Mari edited it. And it's literally a dialogue. The book is the conversation. I thought that was so cool. So at a certain point, when things were clearly getting worse for Mari and her options were kind of running out, I asked her if we could do with great trepidation because I did admire her so much, and I hadn't written a book for a really long time. I'm more of an article person. I really like the format. And. Whereas she prefers the book format. And I said, do you think we could write one of those books together about Winnicott and Lacan? And she's like, absolutely. She was really excited. By the time we actually did it, she had decided that it should not be. She didn't want it to be a dialogue like with Amy, but rather, we each write sort of a short book on our respective. And she wanted to work with Marian Milner. She discovered Marian Milner, right in the last couple. I mean, she'd undoubtedly known her A little bit before, but she really became enamored of Milner's work right in the last year or two of her life through teaching it, which was often the case for her, as with me, discovering things through teaching. And so she wanted to write on Milner. And then, yeah, we. We. We had that time that she refers to in the book in Vienna together. She was here for about six weeks. And then we went off and wrote our own pieces and then, you know, had some collaboration after that, but that's how it came about.

[B]

Wow, that's really. I really love hearing that. And it's the book. I just. I want to say this to the listeners. This book is terrific. Met a. It met a sort of inchoately felt need that I have, and I think many others have the sense of writing about the impact of what's woven through this book as these two authors are thinking through Winnicott, thinking through Milner. I think that you two had a kind of question. I wrote down, what is the point of life anyway? At a certain point, I was like, oh, these two decided to answer, what is the point of life anyway? But with a certain amount of throwing your hands up in the air, this neoliberalism is killing us. What is the point of life anyway? And I think Mari goes as far to say in the book that it is that to some degree, the neoliberalism, the speed up of life, the instrumentalization of everything, the perfection, the pressure for perfection. And to never be, you know, to never be behind is not good for the psyche or for. And as we're reading Mari for the soma that, you know, there's a. I think there's a moment in which she says, I wish I had said stop, just stop. And. But she never could. Right, Here we go. It's so hard, she couldn't say it. Like, the emails that are coming in, like, you're an academic, you know, even myself as a psychoanalyst, it's like the sense of, like, being pulled and pushed and prodded and demanded of has increased to such a degree that, you know, we're driven. We're driven wild. So you two put together this book, which was like. It calms the nervous system, this book. That was my feeling when reading it was like. And in fact, I did. I don't know if I mentioned this in our emails. I did something that was like, well, if I don't. If I can find a way to not, you know, sort of intimate revolt, not participate in the speed up. And so I thought, all right, you're going to do dry January, not buy any clothing, which is a big deal for me. But the book got me thinking like,

[A]

yeah, well, Ari would approve.

[B]

Right. I was like, I'm making my own living hell, you know, so how can I not participate in my own ruin? Right, yeah. So I wanted to ask you. I mean, there's so many questions. Let's just say from the point of view, if you're thinking about Winnicott. And I'd also like to recommend to the readers that if you're unfamiliar with Winnicott, what Gail has written is really a primer. Like you covers the greatest, like the big themes. And what's fantastic is they're all linked to the like sort of studying neoliberalism's impact and using these Winnicottian different terms that we know about. You know, like ongoingness is a thirdness, but showing like the paradox which is so important to you, a way out. So we're driven to distraction, performativity and perfection. What is it that you see as lost in that shuffle? I think

[A]

as you said, I will try probably in vain to represent Mari as well as giving my own answers. But I think for Mari, what she focuses on as the most toxic effect of, as the original subtitle of the book was, but our editor hated it, Neoliberal self optimization, or the original subtitle was a psychoanalytic alternative to neoliberal self optimization.

[B]

Totally. And funnily enough, like Mari almost writes self help books. I think I might have said to her, says you're kind of in the self help, you know, high, high self help range.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. So I think what, what troubles her the most is the performance demand. The demand for performance, for, for efficiency, for productivity, which all involves very strongly controlled and controlling in some way ego. Right. So that's one aspect that really bothers her. And I think the other thing that she focuses on is the lack of sublimity or, or what she calls worldly transcendence in our day to day life. For my part, I think that our current mode of societal order is what bothers me the most, is the binarism, the stark binaries we call in politics polarization. And I talk in the book about how in some ways polarization comes about and sort of the nuances of polarization. So that's definitely one thing and that brings with it a zero sum thinking. Everything is either or. If I gain, someone else has to lose. So whereas I think Mari's focus is a little bit more on the individual becoming or Allowing herself to be a creative individual. I add to that the. The relational. Not in the. In the current psychoanalytic, you know, thing, but, you know, just like relationships to oneself, but also to others and, and to the world.

[C]

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[B]

That's. That's really helpful. And, and I appreciate you sort of representing, you know, yourself. Yourself and Mari. And one of the questions I had was, you know, I was thinking about the relational turn in psychoanalysis. And I never thought of it more as a neoliberal, representing some. Something that may be more of a neoliberal trajectory because there's a sense of, you know, to my knowledge, I'm not trained as relational, but, you know, some of my. Some of my, you know, close friends are or whatever, you know, and I've certainly read and interviewed a lot of relational analysts. The. That the. You write about impingement very poignantly. You write about, like, what interested you in Winnicott was an experience, as. I think, if I can say experience as a daughter in an environment that was impinging and you had to perform for. And all analysts are like this. So if you ever want to train, just. You're already. You already have the, the building blocks, it's for sure. Yeah, yeah. But there's a sense of the environment is impinging upon us. The neoliberal. Keep bettering yourself. And there is a sense of like, I can't ever be an isolate. I can't have solitude. I can't get lost and then find myself. And I was thinking about, within relational thinking that, you know, one of the sort of groundbreaking things was that the analyst was going to reveal to the patient their, Their real selves. And, and. And, you know, I mean, I think there are people that probably do this in ways that are, you know, to use Freud's term, tactful, you know, or whatever, but that, but it's interesting, the desire to show in a. I think part of it is like, you know, to democratize the setting in the interests of democracy. We're going to reveal and what the analyst is really feeling or the analyst will reveal more about themselves. So I don't know it was a new thought, which, yeah, it's interesting.

[A]

So there's so much in what you're saying. Let me sort of go back to. I think the first thing that you were referring to. The way in which surprisingly, kind of surprisingly relationality, the way it sometimes is referred to or used, is surprisingly neoliberal. We think of self optimization as individualistic, as it's all about me. And I think that one of the hallmarks of the neoliberal way of thinking is you're on your own in the way it's cast by its proponents is that this is a positive thing. We don't want the nanny state. We don't want. We don't want anybody making decisions for us, especially not the state. Instead, we, you know, entrepreneurship is heralded as the way of thinking, you know, the way of operating in the world that's most idealized. Of course, on the downside, as we know from the United States and those in Europe who are foolishly imitating the United States, deregulation, you know, the elimination of the social, of the social net, you're on your own self reliance, bootstraps cowboy the whole thing. So you wouldn't think that relationality would fit into that. But one of the things that I talk about in the book is, is the way in which something like the self care movement or, or similarly this relational, relational approach to psychoanalysis. It. It's an antidote or an alternative in a way, but it's so easily pulled in it in another way. It's the. It's the flip side of the binary of either it's me or I'm going to do everything with my group, my yoga group or my, you know, whatever it is, right. So I think. And as far as the. So that's one dimension that I think is really important. And Winnicott has a lot to say about the kind of boundary the kind of relationship leads to creative living. And it's not binary. Not surprisingly, with a guy who came up with the idea of an intermediate area, there's this coincidence in the infant. In his theory of absolute dependence, there is no such thing as an infant, he says, because the infant can't exist without a caregiver. But at the same time, epistemologically or experientially, the infant experiences itself as everything. And so it's kind of both. And in the intermediate area, experience also, it is me and not me. And it's its own thing. You know, it's one of the most important things that I think often gets lost when Talking about the transitional object is that he says very clearly, multiple times, that it has to be experienced as having integrity or life of its own. It has to be experienced as having. As giving warmth or something like that. So that it's not simply an extension of the breast or an hallucination. He says it's. It is not. He says very definitively, it is not an hallucination. So I think that also models a kind of relationality where there are two separate beings and the relationship in a way itself. It's not so much that I reveal my whole self, and I'll say a bit about that in a second, and the analyst reveals her whole self. And that's what's important. No, it's what's between the two that drives the. Each one's identity. If I could just say one thing about the authentic self. You know, I think the true self, false self dichotomy or non dichotomy in my reading is, you know, an unfortunate thing about Winnicott is that his language, his terms lend themselves to being hypostasized and grabbed onto as sort of icons or talismans. And, you know, everybody's like, oh, true self. Also, we know what this. We know what this means. We're all going for authenticity and everything else is fake. But that's not how he uses it. And, uh, one of the things I highlight in the book is that, interestingly, in the essay, he talks about it a lot. But in the essay that's devoted to true and false self, he starts with the false self, and he talks about the ways in which the false self can. It depends not so much on what it is as how it functions. If the. If the false self grows out of compliance.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The other. And is purely defensive, and then the core of the self recedes to the point of complete disappearance. But we all need false selves, so to speak, in order for our true self to even exist in the world or for ourselves. So if the true. If the false self emerges from the impetus of my core, because I want to play in the outside. I want to play with the language of somebody else. I want to play with the costumes, the clothing, the behavior of somebody else, then it's a joyful, creative thing. And it's not obscuring or forcing my true self to hide.

[B]

Right, Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That actually brings something to mind about what Mari wrote about Milner. I mean, I have to say I was shocked that she was drawn to Milner.

[A]

Yeah, me too.

[B]

I mean, this is the woman who Penis envy and other bad feelings. You know, I was like, what is this Milner? But she writes very powerfully about a sort of disillusion, a dissolving of a diminishment at some level, maybe a diminishment or a demotion that Milner liked to practice of the ego as being first and first and foremost. And for Mari, I get that this totally dovetails with her thinking about Lacan. You know, the ego is not in charge, and it shouldn't be in charge. But Mari also writes about the fear of letting go very, very powerfully. Right. And I think that not everybody can let go, can unintegrate without disintegrating. You know, I think it's kind of way of putting it. And that, to me, really relates to what you're talking about, like, the need for this flexible false self that, like, comes and takes care of things and then, you know, then opens the door and, you know, but knows when to. When to sort of, you know, add some cotton batting around the true self and then reduce the cotton batting, as it were. Yeah. So I was. I mean, I saw that. That moment in the book, and you're writing about true and false self. I was like, oh, they're really. They're really covering very familiar, very similar grounds, you know, in. In the work.

[A]

Could I say a little bit about Mari and the letting go of the ego?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And this is, you know, tough to talk about, but I think having. And you're in the same position, having read her work through the years, having followed her work and her. I think that I saw a subtle but powerful shift as she came closer to death, where, you know, her great. I'd say one of her two or three great contributions to the field. One of the main ones is her emphasis on lack. You know, her highlighting of the degree to which and way in which Lacan positions lack at the center of being. And the way she talks about that is just so compelling. And it comes out again in her part of our book where she talks about, you know, the only cure is that there is no cure. This is something that's come up in other parts of her work, but it takes on a greater urgency when you've been told that you have a terminal illness. And, you know, after I said that this was one of her last published works. The last work that she did was called the. Well, it was called the Brokenness of. It is called the Brokenness of Being. And I think that the. She had worked so hard to find that exquisite tension between diving into jouissance. And not drowning. And not drowning and madness, as she puts it in the book.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So she had learned how to take advantage of. That sounds. That sounds very neoliberal. To get what one.

[B]

Not to optimize. But I was like, optimized. Yeah, right.

[A]

Exactly. To experience the. To allow Julie Songs to infuse especially her writing, but also her living without getting lost in it in the destructive way that she always rejected. She was not one of these Lacanians who said, burn it all down, you know, Hurl yourself into the abyss. That's what. No, she never was. As she approached death, I think the idea. There was more fear, of course, but I also think that Milner was attractive to her because of the idea of letting oneself go. That the tension was resolving a little bit more in the direction of the dissolving of boundaries than it had been before. I think Milner came into her life. She saw the connection to Lacan and she highlights the connection to Lacan. But Milner is not. Milner has more of an emphasis on the non egoic, if that's a word.

[B]

Well, and also the. I find myself writing notes in the book like, she really doesn't like people. I looked up. I've read a biography of her, of Milner, by Letley. I forget her first name. I was going to do that interview. I don't know what happened. I didn't interview her somehow. But anyway, I found myself looking at Milner's life a little bit and I was like, oh, she was born in 1900, dies in 1998. She has a husband who dies in 1954, and she has 40 years to wander around, go to Greece, whatever. She kind of was a woman who had a relationship for a while, and in a sense then, you know, the bulk of her adult life was spent. I don't know if she had lovers or what. It's a little hard to think of her as a sentient kind of sexual being. From the biography that I read and from some of her work, and I think the need for solitude, as you know, and Mari was. I mean, when you're, you know you're going to die, I think it's like it's in forced solitude. At some level there is a sense of, you know, yes, I hope I'm alive when I die. But also it's dying. Yeah, Dying is. Dying is happening. And it does and can very much so. The process of dying can be very isolative, even if people love you and want to be with you, you know.

[A]

Yes. It was really her Relate solitude as you. I think you can tell from the book, when I was rereading it in preparation for this interview, I was really struck hard by the super strong emphasis in Mari's part on the value of solitude, which I share. In fact, that was one of the things that brought us together was the really crucial need for solitude in a world that emphasizes relationship. But Mari's is very, very, very, very strong. But her relationship with her friends, it's just unbelievable. We had a memorial for her on the cape a few months after she died and I met some of these friends I'd been in this email chain with. And you know, there's a, it sort of demonstrated a kind of holding environment, to use Winnicott's term, this unconventional. You know, I think one of the things I learned from Mari is along with another couple of friends is the idea of the chosen family, the idea of the, and also, it certainly didn't mean that Mari rejected her family of origin, but that there's a way in which the kinds of mechanisms that we imagine happening with a biological or adoptive family can also take place with friends.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for, for sure. I mean she's, that's, that was, that was my experience, limited as it was with her, was certainly that which, which I share like friends as, you know, if you come, you know, it's also if you come from a family that can drive, that might have deprived you into a state of psychosis as an adult. You come back and maybe you figure out a way to have some kind of relationship, but the limits are profound of like what you know is there for you. And if you don't find other people to sustain you and to, to sort of nourish you and help you along, like, you know, I mean you can, you know, a strong life drive helps when you, when you, when you, when you come from that. I mean.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah. I'm just looking here at all these. What's the point of life anyway? Okay, hold on. We, we.

[A]

That I can't, that I can't answer definitively.

[B]

I, I, I wanted, I wanted to share something funny. The other day I was reading the New York Review of Books and in the back they have, this is the most recent issue, they have these classifieds, very old fashioned classifieds, like people looking for love, right? And like it's like everyone is like 70 and above and a man writes 71 year old man seeks partner for the next 40 years. And I was like, oh, this is an example of like the neoliberal. Like I was like 40 or.

[A]

Or magical thinking.

[B]

Right, right. It's like 40 years, you know, but so. But it's also to think about like dying is like now a defeat. You've been defeated, you're dead, you're gonna die. What if.

[A]

Oh, the whole longevity movement that sort of blossomed after we. I mean, it seems like it's just been in the last couple years, just after we finished the book, this whole obsession. They just opened, believe it or not, I just read in the online newspaper that I read here, they just opened the first Longevity Cafe in Vienna, which I didn't even know was a thing, but it's based, you know, it's all the. All these billionaires who are obsessed with

[B]

imbibing whatever it is.

[A]

I make stuff and technology and exercise and stuff to make themselves. Yeah, you're right. That's a dimension that we really didn't get into, but it's really related. I think both Mari's half and my half of the book, it's more evident in Mari's. But I get to it in the. In the second part of my chapter. The idea, the way in which negativity is. Is. Is threaded through our lives. And I mean like negativity in. In the sense of, you know, death is certainly one of them, but sort of the. The negative of the ego for Milner. Right. Like the non egoic experience. To reuse my potential neologism. And from. From Winnic, I think. Well, you invoked it earlier, unintegration, the idea that emptiness of some sort. In his Fear of Breakdown essay, he has a little piece about emptiness and the necessity of emptiness, of absence, of anything happening, anything being in a way as a place or a moment or a phenomenon out of which life is generated. And. But if you don't, like you were saying before, if you don't have something, then everything that comes after it on some level is compensatory. That's right. Unless you're, you know, lucky and work hard in analysis and are able to actually have it. But, you know, if you don't have the opportunity, as I think we don't in our society today to experience emptiness, lack in the positive sense, the negative as positive, then there is engendered this kind of weird simultaneous fear of emptiness, but also craving it. The example I give in the book is I found out from a student a while back that they often. They get audio books or audio, they make the materials into audio and then they play it at double speed or more so that they can take it in quicker but so that. And so. But on the. But another piece of that is that they want to get to the end, right? Like this idea of, you know, sort of more traditionally, I'm going to work, work, work, work, work, work, work. So I can retire and do nothing.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, there's this really weird relationship to the. You know, to death, to lack, to emptiness in our lives. We're circling around it, avoiding it, but yet drawn to it. Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying. Today, while I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class, I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh, my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.

[B]

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[A]

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[D]

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[B]

Experian drawn to it? Yeah. Yeah, I. Actually, there's a couple of things that are coming to mind about Winnicott, and I was thinking that maybe I am just linking something together that he didn't link together. But the idea of being able to get to the emptiness through the regression is the way that we get the past into the past. I don't think you write about that with the disaster that is the disaster has already happened. And that it's so radical, like to say to a patient who's. I mean, the way in which neoliberalism recruits the repetition compulsion into, you know, into, like, high gear. And it's almost like, yes, of course, you know, the repetition is here. Here comes again. We're going to do this again. But the fear of the emptiness, the fear of experiencing emptiness, not knowingness, um, as if knowledge is, you know, to quote Leo Bersani and Adam, as if knowledge is intimacy, which, you know, it's like not, you know, like. But the part is not. It's hard to let that go. I know all about you. But. But how do we get the disaster that has already happened? Like, when patients hear that there's something that it. It taught it. You know, often as an analyst, you're not speaking to the con. You just. You just say the craziest shit. And like. Because you're not speaking to the conscious mind and you say, well, well, this. This disaster has already happened. That line, if I've used it once, I've used it. I don't know. Over 30 years of doing this work. It's a pivotal thing to say at a certain moment, the disaster's already happened, with the patient's defending against. By trying to think and know and prepare. And it's like, oh, the disaster's already happened. We just haven't gotten it where it needs to be inside of you.

[A]

How do they react when you say that? It's.

[B]

It's usually pretty powerful. It's like. Because it's kind of a co. On, you know, I think some of the best. Some of the best analytics stuff is like, you know, like, it's. It's koan. Like, it's like. One of my analysts who founded my institute would say things like, well, there's no such thing. Actually riffing on Winnicott, but as a modern psychoanalyst, so really quite different but somewhat related. She would say, well, you know, there's no such thing as a mother. Yeah. I said that to Nancy Chattaro, and she was like, what? But I was like, whether, you know, like, in other words, everyone makes their mother, you know, like, on the couch, everybody comes up with who this mother was. And, you know, you try not to get caught up in, like, was that. Did she really do that or did she not do that? This is who she is in. Inside of you. There's no such thing as a mother or everybody. Everybody knows everything about everybody else already anyway, so what's the point of confidentiality given, like, the power of the unconscious? So you say these things. So. So this Winnicott phrase, you know, like. Well, the disa. The disaster that we're. We're working hard to. To keep at bay. It's already happened. Yeah.

[A]

And it. It's a. You know, I. I think it's. When I read that I can't, you know, reproduce the. The first time I read it, but almost every time I. I encounter it again, it seems so profound because it. Well, the effect is profound. It's a relief. It gives you permission to at least temporarily stop the warding off and stop the Keeping at bay. And I think the other dimension of it that seems so important is that he says that the disaster already happened, but there was no one there to experience. Right. So that it's, you know, the idea of it in the. In the process of. In the process of getting it in the place that it needs to be, that is in the memory. But there has to be somebody there to remember it too. So it's, you know, the idea that you can. It's scary and precarious, but the thought that there might be someone there now or a proto someone together with the analyst or together with, you know, someone like probably with the analyst who can experience it again, you know, then you're like diving into it.

[B]

Yeah. Experience it again in the transference and in the countertransference where you really. Yeah, I. I'm just thinking of something that happened with a. With a patient recently in which I made a comment like, oh, I notice I haven't been paid. And somehow it smacked open a door that we, you know, because normally they paid me in a certain. And something was off rhythm. And I said, I noticed that. And I guess maybe this will lead us into part of what you talk about, about aggression and hate, which I thought you'd handled that you handled his thinking about that, I think really beautifully. But the patient became so enraged and was filled with so much hate and came in for two sessions, wouldn't make eye contact, you know, and then. And then told me, I have been fantasizing about finding another analyst. And I knew finally I was there to be. I had survived the hatred. I was being told I was entertaining thoughts of some going to someone. To someone else. And I said, well, who could blame you? Or whatever. And more or less. And that it was. I know there's still more to unpack and there's plenty of moments like this in analyses where it's like you just end up like when the patient really can feel that they hate me and I'm bad or I'm fucked everything up and, you know, and I'm like, you know, I accept the attribution, you know. Yeah, right.

[A]

Well. And so much better that the patient said that than what? Than just sort of passive aggressively didn't pay you.

[B]

Right. Or just didn't. Didn't show up or maybe, you know, actually was able to come in and. Because, I mean, there was, there was so, so much that, that that grew from it. But it was a really wonderful experience. I felt so happy. And this is something that has to be like speaking about the impact of neoliberalism on my profession. Right. Like it is. You know, we. We mentioned the relational term, but, but, but beyond that, the idea that people are now coming in to optimize themselves.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

You know, and that I have this sort of way. Let me see if I can. Yeah. So, okay, I wrote this thing out. Let me make use of the time I put in. Write it. No, bad feelings are not a part of the neoliberal vocabulary, writes Mari. Okay. And I was thinking that, in fact, the capacity to feel and articulate feelings is at risk of becoming like a dying art. People come into my consulting room and they tell me that they have. And you write about diagnosis. They have adhd, ptsd, ocd, clinical depression, blah, blah, blah. And I sit with people who come in and tell me this about themselves, and they lean on a vocabulary that only leads them to the pharmacy and the psychiatrist in the end and devalues speech and serendipity or kismaticity. And sometimes I think, I just want to quit my job. This is so bad to be with. I don't know that I have been trained to work with this. And then you write, the foregrounding of diagnosis can, if taken too far, be an example of the compulsive filling in of empty spaces that I've identified as squelching of creative potential. Do you have any?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I've had lots. The phenomenon of diagnosis has really preoccupied me a lot in my. In my profession as well. You know, we have now in the university and the college, in the academic setting, a huge apparatus of accommodation. And this is new, and it's good. I really want to make clear how important it is that we are. That mental illness, disability, neurodiversity has become destigmatized. It's extremely important. But like you're describing in your field, there's a way in which I think what troubles me about it the most is the. Is the stopping. Is the effect of stopping, of definitiveness or finality. Right. Like, aha. I mean, in a way, I can imagine that that's a good thing for the person who has been having this sort of vague sense of unease or suffering or something like that, and that. And, you know, especially for women, people of color, other marginalized groups, not being taken seriously, their feelings, their thoughts, and then it's like, aha, okay, well, you're in the autism spectrum. Aha. You have adhd. And it's. It's a sense of rest and. And knowing who you are. And as I describe in terms of authenticity, and identity, you know, if. Insofar as even your positive identity. Well, to some people, this has become a positive identity, right? Being having ADHD or being autistic. To some very. Some people, that is like an identity. But even if it's. If it's simply a diagnosis, if it stops thinking, if it stops engagement, if it stops curiosity, then it can get a little damaging. On a much more sort of lighthearted note, there's often a moment in a literature course where a student will say, I think this is all a dream. You know what I mean? Like, whatever it is, it's Kafka, or it's something like this insight of, aha, it's all a dream. And my response to that is always, okay. That's not the stopping point, right? It's not like, okay, now I've got it. Yeah, you know it. That's the starting point. It's like, oh, what does this dream look like? You know, what does your particular experience of ADHD feel like? Look like? What does it do to your life? That's fine, right? I mean, having it, being apart and opening up into exploration seems great, but, yeah, shutting down, not so great.

[B]

Can I. Are you able to stay a few minutes longer?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Are you going to be a bad analyst and just like, let the session run, so to speak? Oh, I lost track of time. But I didn't know. I'm sure not.

[A]

Neither professors or teachers nor analysts lose track of time.

[B]

So, so true. Let's see. What in the. Oh. Oh, I wanted to ask you something about a thing I. I'm thinking a lot about, and it again has to do with the profession of psychoanalysis, which, you know, like, you're kind of a fellow traveler, let's just put it that way. Like in the old school, like Communist Party, you know, whatever. Like, my sense. My sense is reading you. I'm like, okay, you know, you seem to me an analyzed person and. And also I just want to shout out to your daughter Mercer, who ran the Instagram page for several key years for new books in psychoanalysis. So this is a real treat to get to speed the scale, because I know Mercer and I have such extraordinary fondness for her. And she taught me about. She taught, right? She taught me about Winnicott. I was like, you know, I'm pretty, blah, blah, blah, knowing when I first met her and we sat down for a coffee or something before I said, you want to come onto New Books and be an intern and run the social media? Oh, my God. Like, all I can say is the. The Win. You know, the transgenerational transmission of Winnicott has taken really full effect. I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

He played, he played a big role in, in, you know, I, I. Having, having a little Winnicott in the back of my head when I was being told, you know, no, or any terrible mother or, you know, all those owls are saying, it's like, okay, survive, survive.

[B]

You can survive. And don't retaliate self be used. Yeah, right, right, right, right.

[A]

Well, really helpful.

[B]

It seems to me she had a good experience. So. But I'm thinking about sort of, you know, I think new books in psychoanalysis is a part of this. I think that we have now something strange happening. I just read Amia Srinivasan's essay, the Impossible Patient, which I highly recommend, in which it's from the London Review Books, in which she asked the question. So there's now a psychoanalytic youthquake essentially, that everybody wants. You know, we're just talking about psychoanalysis and the institutes are filled with people wanting to become analysts. And, you know, it's all, it's all very exciting, but there's also. With an idea that there's something psychoanalysis can offer politics. And Srinivasan is saying, well, is that really the case? You know, is that really the case? And. But part of what she's talking about is kind of this way in which psychoanalysis is again, more in certain public spheres. And I've been thinking about the way in which this has impacted the profession. When I first started to do interviews, most analysts said, no, they were not 16 years ago. They were not going to speak into the ether without knowing who might listen to them. Now we have a. Things are quite different. And there's a number of. More than a number, I'm sure, of analysts who have, like, PR professionals working to promote their thinking. On the one hand, I love this. On the other hand, I'm like. It strikes me as being maybe part of this sort of neoliberal thing. And I don't mean to be like a stick in the mud about it, but I'm like, you know. And I've probably been a part of it by like, giving analysts this, you know, or people interested in psychoanalysis a space to talk about their books. I just was wondering if you have any thoughts about, about that.

[A]

Yeah, no, it's. I think, I think the general question of the extent to which psychoanalysis is a. Is a valid mode of understanding social political life and also intervening in social, political life is huge as far as I can tell. I go to APCs almost every year. That's always high on the agenda for discussion. And it's a real question. It's an individually based method. It's, it's associated with upper socioeconomic groups. It costs a lot of money. Its tradition is primarily European. There are lots of ways in which it doesn't seem to lend itself to engaging with the burning questions that we're struggling with. On the other hand, I still remember I've stopped posting on any social media. I read stuff and follow stuff, but I don't post. I haven't for years. But I remember after Trump was elected in 2016, after having sort of struggled with friends, with progressive friends who were like, I hate Hillary Clinton. You know, she's really bad and this is really bad. And then I'm like, you know, being a Germanist, I'm like, yeah, but you know, we've got, you know, at that time I was really adamant against comparing the United States to Germany, Austria in the 30s because specific socio historical context, blah, blah, blah. Now I don't hesitate, but in any case, I remember when, the day he got elected, I posted maybe my last post ever, I said, I will never again apologize for devoting my life to the study of the unconscious because I don't think we can understand what's happening in the United States, in Austria, in Hungary, you know, without taking account of the unconscious. It's, you know, the media try to make it be about, you know, economics and affordability and, you know, demographics and all these other things which are all very real. But at base we're dealing with, you know, just to take one piece of it. Backlash against a black president. Right. Or backlash against gay marriage or queer life's life. You know, there are just so many things that I think we need a psychoanalytic way of thinking in order to be able to understand. That doesn't make it any easier to figure out how do we act as psychoanalytically informed people in, in the world? You know, how do we act politically? How do we, how do we take action, intervene without being sucked into the. Yeah, to the sort of self promotional aspect of neoliberalism, without being, you know, squelched and just turned into mush by the machinations. It's really hard to know how to act. But I am more and more convinced of the value of psychoanalytic approaches to thinking about the world.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. The one caveat I think that we have to perpetually contend with is, you know, about the Holmes Commission report on American racism and race. American racism in American psychoanalysis. And they say action is needed. Action is needed at all levels. What psychoanalysts don't do is don't act. Yeah. And so, and in fact I was talking to a friend the other night. It's just an interesting aside, but she was, we were talking about why so few black candidates that still, you know, like, like, you know, politics begins at home and these institutes still remain largely like very lily white. And a friend of mine who's not an analyst said, you know, that's really weird. She's like, and she used to work at like American Express. And she's like, oh, so, and so is black. He was the CEO. She's like, there's a black person who's been the head of everything, of colleges, of this, of that, but in psychoanalysis there's, is there a black person? She asked me who's ahead of an institute? And I said, I don't think so. I kind of don't think so. So it's just so.

[A]

But isn't. It's interesting though, because just to be provocative, I guess isn't the follow up question what happens to those black people who are the heads of these things? You know, think about Claudine Gay at Harvard, right? Think about, there's a Williams alum and he was a trustee for a while, I can't remember his name. He was the CEO of Red Lobster. And he, and he, you know, was, you know, it. There's, there's a way in which. I'm not saying it's okay that there aren't flag heads of institutes, there need to be. But I hope that when or if that hopefully that will become the case, it won't be in that way that they've all too often been rent, put in, you know, that they end up, I'm not saying they're putting, they end up in positions. They are more precarious because.

[B]

Made to walk the plank for everyone,

[A]

not made to walk the plank in ways that you know, are really are really bad. And I also, in terms of action, you're absolutely, I mean, there's no argument that can be made or should be made about having more black analysts, more analysts of color, same thing. You know, it's, it's. There are way too few people, tenured faculty who are, who are black and otherwise people of color. As far as action is concerned. I think it's, maybe it's very possible that I'm just sort of self justifying. But as you mentioned, my current work is on reading, it's on reading literature and teaching literature, reading literature together with people from, with a psychoanalytic lens. And I had sort of been defensive and apologetic about doing that as my life for a long time. But I'm increasingly thinking, and I think Minnesota is showing us that this might be a little bit true, that the expectation that everything happened publicly and sort of with grand gestures, I think we're learning that there are other kinds of action. You know, the taking of food to people who fear going out of their house because they're gonna get kidnapped by ice, or the organization of pickup groups for children at schools. You know, these are very much behind the scenes. Just the other night I was at a reading group at the Freud Museum. I'm in a Freud. We're, we're going extremely slowly through the Freud fleece. Oh, well, correspondence since 2015, and we're only about two thirds of the way through the book. But at this one of the, you know, it was the first time I'd been there in a long time because I haven't been back to Vienna for an extended period of time for a while. And one of the, one of my friends there, who was an analyst, was like, I just don't understand why Americans aren't doing more. Why aren't they protesting? And I know what she means. But, you know, in a, in a society like the American society, where everything is so precarious, where there is absolutely no social net whatsoever, if you lose your job because you are, you know, kidnapped by ice, and then you're, you know, because you're trying to protect your neighbors and then, and then your, your employer says, well, you're too much trouble. You are in danger of, it's a

[B]

real existential crisis, you know, of being extinguished, actually.

[A]

Being extinguished. And that's not the only reason. I do think that, you know, it's too bad that there's not more widespread big protests, but I, I really think that psychoanalysis and the kind of work that happens day to day at universities, despite what everybody thinks, we're not, you know, like, indoctrinating people on the one hand or turning them into, you know, like tools of the machine on the other. There's minute to minute, day to day stuff that happens in spaces like the psychoanalytic consulting room and the classroom that are radical in the wrong way.

[B]

Yeah, I hope.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, no, no, I, I mean, I, I, I hear you. I really, it's, you know, we think about intimate revolt, of course, you know, that, that is, there's a Lot of. A lot of intimate revolt that goes like women's labor in the home unseen. But it's sort of like, you know, I think there's this idea that if we were all more involved in certain kinds of refusals, transformations of thinking about how we're supposed to live, we wouldn't live that way. I think you guys have the example and think in the introduction about, like, being in Europe, the war in the Ukraine, people are sitting in candlelight at night, like, you know, what are we going to do to make life a

[A]

life well, to be less dependent on Russian oil or Russian gas?

[B]

Brett, listen, I should probably bring us to a close. I hate to do it because this is so fun. And I hope that the audience got the feeling of kind of like what this book can produce in a reader. And I think it's kind of like a great book to read with friends. It's really. It was a soul, like, lifted my soul and made me want to share it and, you know, and obviously do this interview. And so I highly, highly recommend it. I don't recommend so strongly all the books that I. Every time I do an interview sometimes, you know, but this one is like, I'm like, this is, this is going to speak to you, where you live, for a lot of people. So thank you for taking the time to be here and to the audience. I think the next interview I'm going to do, it's unclear when, is going to be with Andrea Chalenza. And it's an. Oh, man. What's the title? You know, these titles. Part of Aging, the Worst part of the agencies. Titles are like, I'm like, you know, it's. That one is. It's not Erotic Revelations. Oh, it's on erotic. Erotic Transference and. Or Erotic Counter. Anyway, should be sexy and interesting. Okay, this sounds great. All right, so I am going to cut us off here, but we can say goodbye to each other off the air. Thank you, listeners. Thank you, Gail. Okay, thank you.